Speaker Index

Ron Anderson has more than twenty years of information technology experience in networks, infrastructure, and software. An expert in professional services consulting, business development, and client support, Ron has worked for industry leaders including AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Nortel/Avaya, and HP Software. Passionate about mobility, he has a holistic understanding of the mobility space, and is skilled in helping enterprises understand the opportunities mobility can bring to their organization. With Visionary Integration Professionals, Ron helps clients create and/or refine their mobile strategies, and develop and test mobile applications to ensure the end-user has the best overall mobile user experience.

Jason Arbon is the CEO of AppDiff.com, focused on automagically identifying differences in mobile app UI, UX, and performance. Jason is also the creator of the new mobile web search and discovery app mobo (herecandy.com). Jason was formerly the director of engineering and director of product at Applause.com/uTest.com, where he created the App Store data analytics service and led overall product strategy to deliver crowdtesting to top app teams via more than 100,000 community members. Jason previously held engineering management and innovation roles at Google and Microsoft. He coauthored How Google Tests Software and authored App Quality: Secrets for Agile App Teams.

Chief strategy officer Wayne Ariola leads the development and execution of Parasoft’s long-term strategy. Wayne has contributed to the design of core Parasoft technologies and has been awarded several patents for his inventions. He is a recognized leader on service virtualization, API quality, quality policy governance, and application security. Wayne brings more than twenty years of strategic consulting experience in the technology and software development industries.

Adam Auerbach is the Technology Director for Advanced Testing and Release services for Capital One Financial Corporation, a diversified bank with 65-million customer accounts worldwide and more than 900 branch locations. Adam is responsible for Capital One’s enterprise performance and automated testing departments as well as enterprise release management. Since joining Capital One, he has provided leadership for the agile transformation of their quality assurance group and led the enterprise adoption of DevOps and ATDD. Before joining Capital One, Adam was with Chase and other financial and insurance companies, in various leadership positions focusing on quality and agile practices.

James Bach is founder and principal consultant of Satisfice, Inc., a software testing and quality assurance company. In the 1980s, James cut his teeth as a programmer, tester, and SQA manager in Silicon Valley in the world of market-driven software development. For nearly fifteen years, he has traveled the world teaching rapid software testing skills and serving as an expert witness on court cases involving software testing. James is the author of Lessons Learned in Software Testing and Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar: How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success.

With more than eighteen years of software testing experience, Jon Bach has held technical and managerial positions in companies including Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. As director of Live Site Quality for eBay, Jon is dedicated to building “end-to-end” tests (activity flows) in eBay’s core sites to discover important bugs that threaten its core business. He and his brother James created Session-Based Test Management, a method to manage and report exploratory testing. Jon frequently speaks at the STAR conferences and usually can be found wearing a ball cap, hanging out in the conference hallways, encouraging others, and sharing best testing ideas and patterns.

Richard Bender has more than forty-five years experience in software with a primary focus on quality assurance and testing. He has consulted internationally to large and small corporations, government agencies, and the military. Richard’s work has included a wide variety of application classes and technology bases from embedded systems to super computer-based systems—and everything in between—consulting to both vendors and IT departments alike. He has been active in establishing industry standards for software quality and is a frequent speaker at conferences, universities, and corporate events. He was one of the first programmers ever awarded IBM’s Outstanding Invention Award for his breakthroughs on code based testing.

Mike Benkovich brings it all—energy, laughter, and a contagious passion for coding—with him. In a career that has taken him from minion to business owner, from database administrator to developer, from author to evangelist, Mike has seen it all. In more than twenty-five years of working in the technology industry, he has been part of the latest waves to sweep the industry. Whether delivering MSDN events live or webcast presentations, on the developer resource site BenkoTips or his blog, Mike brings enthusiasm for tools and an energy for the search to find a better way. Follow Mike on Twitter @mbenko.

Now a senior backend engineer for PlayFab, Melissa Benua has worked in nearly every software development role—engineer, test, DevOps, and program management—in her career. She's created and run high-availability, high-quality services at Boeing and Microsoft on products such as Bing, Cortana, and Xbox One. Melissa discovered her love of massively-scaled systems while working on the Bing backend, where she honed the art of keeping highly-available complex systems up while undergoing massive code churn. Whether working with classic or cutting-edge testing models, Melissa isn’t afraid to mix traditional approaches with bold new ideas to make her products better, faster, and more reliable.

Tester, consultant, and trainer Michael Bolton is the coauthor (with James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing, a course that presents a methodology and mindset for testing software expertly in uncertain conditions and under extreme time pressure. A leader in the context-driven software testing movement, Michael has twenty years of experience testing, developing, managing, and writing about software. Currently, he leads DevelopSense, a Toronto-based consultancy. Prior to DevelopSense, he was with Quarterdeck Corporation, where he managed the company’s flagship products and directed project and testing teams—both in-house and worldwide. Contact Michael at [email protected].

A VP of global delivery and solutions for tap|QA, Inc., Jennifer Bonine began her career in consulting, implementing large ERP solutions. Jennifer has held executive level positions leading development, quality assurance and testing, organizational development, and process improvement teams for Fortune 500 companies in several domains. In an engagement for one of the world’s largest technology companies, Jennifer served as a strategy executive and in corporate marketing for the C-Suite. In her career, she has had several opportunities to build global teams from the ground up and has been fortunate to see how many of the world’s top companies operate from the C-Suite viewpoint.

David Bradley has more than twenty-five years of experience in the software industry. Before becoming a professional tester at Citrix in 2007, he worked as a software engineer on a variety of embedded and distributed systems, primarily for the defense sector. As the senior test process lead for the Desktop and Application Group at Citrix Systems, David has been involved in successfully delivering multiple test projects using graphical test planning (GTP). As a proponent of its use, he regularly provides talks and training on GTP to teams worldwide, challenging and changing their views on testing.

Hans Buwalda has been working with information technology since his high school years. In his career, Hans has gained experience as a developer, manager, and principal consultant for companies and organizations worldwide. He was a pioneer of the keyword approach to testing and automation, now widely used throughout the industry. His approaches to testing, like Action Based Testing and Soap Opera Testing, have helped a variety of customers achieve scalable and maintainable solutions for large and complex testing challenges. Hans is a frequent speaker at STAR conferences and is lead author of Integrated Test Design and Automation.

Todd DeCapua is a senior product marketing manager at HP, focused on network virtualization and service virtualization. In addition, He is an innovation coach with the HP Software Innovation Team and chief technology evangelist with the HP Software Thought Leadership and Evangelism Team. A seasoned software professional, Todd has more than twenty years of experience in IT applications development, IT operations, product marketing, product management, channels operations, and business development.

A self-proclaimed nerd, Brandon Carlson works for Lean TECHniques, Inc., an IT consultancy that helps teams deliver high-value, high-quality products to market. Since starting his career in 1995, Brandon has held positions from development and architecture to management—and he’s still learning. Passionate about elevating the performance of IT as a whole, he has helped numerous organizations from startups to Fortune 100 companies improve their product development and delivery systems. Brandon can be reached on Twitter @bcarlso and pretty much everywhere else on the web as “bcarlso.” Read his blog at bcarlso.net/.

Tom Chavez has more than twenty years of experience as a manager and product manager in the software development tools field. Today, Tom works in product management at SOASTA, the leader in performance analytics. He has worked across Silicon Valley at industry leaders including Apple, Sun, PalmSource, and Intuit delivering tools for Mac, Java, PalmOS, Linux, and Android development and testing. Tom is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and meet-ups. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomChavez.

With more than thirty years of experience as an information systems professional at commercial and nonprofit organizations,Lee Copelandhas held technical and managerial positions in applications development, software testing, and software process improvement. At TechWell Corp., Lee has developed and taught numerous training courses on software development and testing issues, and is a sought-after speaker at software conferences in the United States and abroad. He is the author of the popular reference book, A Practitioner’s Guide to Software Test Design.

A consultant, lecturer, author, and test manager, Rick Craig has led numerous teams of testers on both large and small projects. In his thirty years of consulting worldwide, Rick has advised and supported a diverse group of organizations on many testing and test management issues. From large insurance providers and telecommunications companies to smaller software services companies, he has mentored senior software managers and helped test teams improve their effectiveness. Rick is coauthor of Systematic Software Testing and is a frequent speaker at testing conferences, including every STAR conference since its inception in 1992.

Wim Demey is a Solution Architect Testing working for CTG Belgium. He started his career in 1997 and has extended his knowledge and expertise over the years by working in several areas (pharma, utilities, telecom, non-profit, social security) and roles (test manager, test tools specialist, coach, presales). Driven by an eagerness to learn new things he is always looking forward where he can cross the borders of testing with a special interest for technical topics (infrastructure testing, test tools).

Mike Duskis got his start as a programmer, hacking video games as a child in the ‘80s. Immediately after high school, Mike sold his first custom-built business software product and launched a play-by-mail gaming company. He went on to gain a broad and deep appreciation of the software development process by playing nearly every conceivable role on projects ranging from children's entertainment to safety-critical medical devices. Based in Boulder, Colorado, Mike currently plays the QA manager role for 10–4 Systems, the world's first marketplace for capacity to move freight.

Mike Fulkerson is the chief technology officer of Capital One Labs, a research lab within Capital One seeking to develop the next generation of payment systems. He brings more than twenty years of technology experience with leadership positions at ILOG (now part of IBM) and Rosetta Stone. At Rosetta Stone Mike led software development and the advanced research and development teams, and as CTO ran the entire product development organization. In addition to being part of the leadership team that led Rosetta Stone’s successful IPO in 2009, the products Mike delivered have now generated more than $1.5B in cumulative revenue.

An agile methodologist, practitioner, and coach, Bob Galen ([email protected])helps guide companies in their adoption of Scrum and other agile methodologies and practices. Bob is a principal agile evangelist at Velocity Partners; president of RGCG; and frequent speaker on software development, project management, software testing, and team leadership. He is a Certified Scrum Coach, Certified Scrum Product Owner, and an active member of the Agile and Scrum Alliances. Bob published Scrum Product Ownership–Balancing Value from the Inside Out.

As director of consultancy for Hitachi Consulting, Julie Gardiner provides consultancy and training in all aspects of testing, management, and agile, and specializes in risk, test management, and usability. A certified ScrumMaster and agile coach, Julie has more than twenty years of experience as a developer, DBA, project manager, head of operations management, and head of R&D. She has held positions of test analyst, test team leader, test consultant, and test manager in the public sector and in the financial, broadcasting, insurance, utilities, retail, web, and telecom industries using both traditional and agile methodologies.

Sushmitha Geddam is a Big Data test architect with the Data Testing Centre of Excellence of Cognizant’s Quality Engineering & Assurance practice. In her eleven years of IT industry experience, Sushmitha has delivered multifaceted enterprise business software projects in the investment banking, telecom, healthcare, and insurance domains. At Cognizant, she is responsible for developing internal talent and for providing the TCoE with delivery oversight, thought leadership, and best practices.

Paul Gerrard is a consultant, teacher, author, webmaster, programmer, tester, conference speaker, rowing coach, and publisher. He has conducted consulting assignments in all aspects of software testing and quality assurance, specializing in test assurance. Paul has presented keynotes and tutorials— occasionally award winning—at testing conferences on four continents. He is a principal of Gerrard Consulting Limited, the host of the UK Test Management Forum, and the Programme Chair for the 2014 EuroSTAR testing conference. In 2010, Paul won the EuroSTAR Testing Excellence Award. He's been programming since the mid-1970s and loves using the Python programming language.

Pamela Gillaspie is a founding mother and managing test engineer at TestPlant, maker of the eggPlant range of test-automation tools. At TestPlant, Pamela does functional testing of load-testing tools, integration-testing of mobile-testing tools, and a little bit of everything in between. Above all, she appreciates the opportunity to help shape the tools of her trade. Pamela is a co-organizer of the Boulder QA Meetup Group and an active member of the Software Quality Association of Denver. She would love to hear from fellow testers on Twitter @PamelaGillaspie.

Cynthia Gilmer leads the Enterprise Business Transformation practice at MITRE Corporation. She has broad experience in technology, innovation management, new product development, and business process improvement in the government, software, telecommunications, and information technology sectors. Prior to joining MITRE, Cindy ran her own consulting company for ten years specializing in innovation management and new product/service development. Formerly, Cindy worked as a systems engineer, software engineer, and manager for government contractors and commercial companies.

Andreas Grabner is a performance engineer who has been working in this field for the past fifteen years. Andreas helps organizations identify the real problems in their applications and then uses this knowledge to teach others how to avoid the problems by sharing engineering best practices. He was a developer, tester, and evangelist for Segue Software, builders of the Silk Testing product line. Later Andreas joined Dynatrace where, for the past eight years, he has helped organizations worldwide test applications, better understand the technologies behind their apps, and improve the entire development process. He shares his expertise on blog.dynatrace.com.

Agile testing coach and practitioner Janet Gregory (@janetgregoryca) is the coauthor of Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams and a contributor to 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know. Janet specializes in showing agile teams how testers can add value in areas beyond critiquing the product. For the past ten years, she has been working with teams to transition to agile development. Janet teaches agile testing courses and tutorials worldwide, contributes articles to leading publications, and enjoys sharing her experiences at conferences and user group meetings worldwide. Find more information at janetgregory.ca or visit her blog.

Matt Griscom has twenty years of experience creating software including innovative test automation, harnesses, and frameworks. Two degrees in physics primed him to seek the big picture in any setting. This comprehensive vision and love of solving difficult and important problems led him to create the MetaAutomation pattern language to enable more effective software automation for quality measurement. He started his MetaAutomation blog in 2011, but in 2014 Matt published the ground-breaking and definitive description of the MetaAutomation pattern language in book form. Matt loves helping people solve problems with computers and IT. Email Matt at [email protected].

Harini Gupta, senior software engineer at Microsoft Corporation, has more than twelve years of industry experience building and shipping software products that are used by more than a billion people. Harini has held many roles including software development, software testing, and leader of software engineers. She has navigated the changing face of software testing from traditional software development to agile practices including continuous integration and delivery, flighting, and testing in production. See Harini’s full profile at LinkedIn.

Parimala Hariprasad spent her youth studying people and philosophy, and in the workplace she applied her learnings to helping create skilled testers. Parimala has been a tester for more than eleven years in domains of CRM, security, e-commerce, and healthcare. Her expertise lies in test coaching, test delivery excellence, and creating great teams that ultimately fire her because they become self-sufficient. Parimala has experienced the transition from web to mobile and emphasizes the need for design thinking in testing. She frequently rants on her blog Curious Tester, tweets as @CuriousTester, and is on LinkedIn.

Dawn Haynes is COO, principal trainer, and consultant for PerfTestPlus, Inc., and a former director of the Association for Software Testing. Dawn’s unique blend of experience, humor, and effectiveness at providing tools and techniques that help students at all levels generate new approaches to common and complex software testing problems has resulted in her international recognition as an elite trainer of testers. She provides consulting services and is a frequent speaker at testing conferences, local groups, and intimate gatherings of testers. Dawn has more than twenty-eight years of experience supporting, administering, developing, and testing software and hardware systems—from small business operations to large corporate enterprises.

Ricki Henry has more than thirty-eight years in application development, with twenty of those as a project manager. Ricki has focused her career on process improvement and challenges herself to stay current with emerging technology. When working in gaming, she delivered the first ever project to be on time without crunching the test team. Promising the test manager there would not be overtime for testing, Ricki delivered while the other teams continually missed their deadlines. How did she do that? Good project management coupled with collaboration from all teams involved in the project.

The managing director and head of the testing practice at Doran Jones, Paul Holland has twenty years of hands-on testing and test management experience, primarily at Alcatel-Lucent where he led a transformation of the testing approach for two product divisions, making them more efficient and effective. As a test manager and tester, Paul focused on exploratory testing, test automation, and improving testing techniques. For the past five years, he has been consulting and delivering training to companies such as Intel, Intuit, Progressive Insurance, HP, Raymond James, and General Dynamics. Paul is one of three teachers of the Rapid Software Testing course. Follow@PaulHolland_TWN

As manager of quality assurance for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts Technology, Les Honniball leads a team of QA engineers responsible for testing the web sites of Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, Disneyland Resort in California, the Disney Cruise Line, and the Walt Disney Paris and Hong Kong theme parks and resorts. A twenty-three year veteran of the testing field with experience working for companies large and small, Les has worked with remote QA teams in India, the Philippines, Argentina, and the US using the agile development process. Les works closely with various automation teams at Disney to help define the core automation tests needed to launch a successful website.

An agile tester, trainer, and coach, Griffin Jones provides consulting on context-driven software testing and regulatory compliance to companies in regulated and unregulated industries. Recently, he was the director of quality and regulatory compliance at iCardiac Technologies which provides core lab services for the pharmaceutical industry to evaluate the safety of their potential new drugs. Griffin was responsible for all matters relating to quality and FDA regulatory compliance including presenting the verification and validation (testing) results to external regulatory auditors. He is currently a host of the Workshop on Regulated Software Testing (WREST). Reach Griffin at [email protected].

Tania Katan is an award-winning author and performer who believes in storytelling at all costs! Katan has performed her stories at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, NPR, Comedy Central Stage, TEDx, and more. Her work has been written about in Huffington Post, TIME, BuzzFeed, GLAMOUR, New York Times, and others. Formerly a Curator of Literary and Performing Arts at SMoCA, Katan made the audacious leap into technology and is currently instigating the the #ItWasNeverADress campaign at Axosoft, because every rock star company needs a punk!

A manager of software engineering at Ultimate Software, Tariq King has more than a decade of experience in software engineering and testing. Tariq provides technical leadership, strategic direction, and staff training in product development and quality assurance across the organization. He is the project lead for internal tool development, and manages a team responsible for test architecture and release management. Tariq has published more than thirty research articles on software testing in IEEE and ACM sponsored journals, conferences, and workshops. As an adjunct professor at Florida International University, he teaches courses in software engineering and project management. Contact Tariq at LinkedIn.

Test advisor at Professional Testing, Bart Knaack has more than twenty years of experience in testing and test management. Bart has contributed to testing projects and processes in roles of test manager, test data management team lead, and process improvement agent. He has coached testers, built up test teams, and developed processes in test, test support, and overall quality management and improvement. Bart is a frequent speaker at conferences, universities, and colleges. In 2009 Bart and James Lyndsay co-founded the TestLab, an exciting part of today’s STAR conferences.

Jay Kremer is the director of quality assurance for the international dating service Zoosk. Previously he spent fifteen years working as a tester and program manager for Microsoft products including Azure, Windows, Windows Embedded, MSN, and Rights Management Services. Jay has designed solutions that daily impact millions of users worldwide, but he is most proud of achieving high automation coverage at Zoosk. Jay frequently writes for the Zoosk engineering blog and can be found on Twitter @ChaosLemur.

For over 15 years, Melvin Laguren has focused on testing applications in industries like pharmaceutical, identity management, and eCommerce. At Macy's, he was involved in many of the continuous delivery pipeline initiatives taking on the additional role of DevOps and Automation Architect. Now as the QA Automation Lead for Wrap Media, LLC, he is taking his experience in DevOps and Test Automation to design the next generation CD pipeline for Wrap Media's proprietory Platform which relies heavily on mobile. In addition to hosting the Test Fanatics Meetup, he

Bryan Lamb is a twenty-year veteran tech leader, entrepreneur, and trainer who has served venerable companies including Apple, Adobe, Yahoo, and most recently Experian. For the past four years, he has guided Experian’s progression from no test automation all the way to full CI-driven test automation of their web, mobile, API, and batch products. Bryan evangelizes a pragmatic yet scalable and flexible open source test automation approach which avoids re-inventing the (framework) wheel. He teaches this approach enabling organizations to experience better, faster test automation success with smaller upfront investments and reduced barriers to entry.

Claire Lohr has been an active professional in the computer field for thirty years, with the last twenty years emphasizing software process improvement and testing. Claire provides training—design, authoring, and instruction—and consulting services for a wide variety of both government and commercial clients. She is a Lloyd’s Register trained ISO 9000 Lead Auditor and has been trained to perform Software Capability Evaluations for the SW-CMM. Claire was the chair of the Working Group for the IEEE Std 829-2008 Software and System Test Documentation, and has served on both the IEEE Computer Society’s Software and Systems Engineering Standards Committee and the IEEE Computer Society’s Standards Advisory Board.

Wilson Mar has been building and bringing enterprise applications to market on all major enterprises—from mobile to mainframe clouds—as an architect, developer, performance tester, and manager. His website (wilsonmar.com) provides concise, in-depth advice on leading technologies, especially on LoadRunner and performance engineering.

Test consultant for the Netherlands-based Polteq Test Services B.V. Jeroen Mengerink has performed multiple TPI assessments worldwide. His technical skills allow him to team with developers in testing websites, APIs, and web services. Jeroen performs both functional testing and performance testing. In addition to his work for clients, he is involved with test innovations in agile. Jeroen teaches the Certified Agile Tester course and courses on agile, SOA, and cloud; coauthored Testing Cloud Services; and blogs at jmengerink.wordpress.com. Follow him on Twitter @AngusVB.

Gary Mogyorodi has over thirty-three years of experience in the computing industry. Gary consults, trains, and mentors in software testing, specializing in Requirements-Based Testing. Some of his customers include Siemens, Cendant, Rockwell Automation, Boeing, EMC, IBM, LexisNexis, RBC, H&R Block, CIBC, TELUS, CGI, FiLogix, and Home Hardware. Gary is a Certified Tester, and Advanced Level Functional Tester with the ASTQB. He has managed testing efforts, developed testing methodologies, and created standards and procedures for quality assurance and testing. Gary obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo, and an M.B.A. from McMaster University. A prolific speaker, he has delivered presentations at premier software events throughout North America.

Sundar Narayanan leads the Integrated Solutions and Services Group of Wipro Technologies in North America. With over eighteen years of experience, Sundar’s core expertise has been in Performance Engineering of IT systems. He has led Performance Engineering practices for large consultancies including TCS and Capgemini.

Jaimee Newberry’s emphasis is on Human Beings—ones that work inside our companies and ones that use the things we make. She brings seventeen years of human interface design expertise, including the past five years with mobile applications emphasis to her corporate advising + coaching practice. Jaimee is driven to bring more humanity into the work we do and the products we make. She brings insight, perspective, practices, and a personal ecology proven to elevate the culture, collaboration, communication, and processes of high-performance software design and development teams worldwide. Jaimee has worked with Audi, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Disney, McDonalds, Nintendo, Zappos, and more.

Eing Ong is a Principal Software Test Engineer at Intuit, where she helps define and execute the quality strategy for QuickBooks Online Platform Services, the operating system behind small business accounting ecosystem. She began her career as a developer in military air traffic control systems, followed by implementing platform-independent enterprise solutions at Sun Microsystems. Her passion for identifying and implementing efficient test automation led her to PayPal, where she pioneered an end-to-end test automation framework for all PayPal financial transactions.

A technology innovator in quality assurance, Greg Paskal pioneers best practices across tools, techniques, and talents. Exploring existing and new approaches in test automation, Greg enjoys mentoring automation engineers in highly sustainable, maintainable approaches for greater ROI in automation efforts. He authored Test Automation in the Real World, contributed to industry publications such as StickyMinds, and recorded podcasts for TestTalks. Greg has spoken at conferences on his Minimal Essential Testing Strategy, now developed into an iPhone app. He founded the Open Test Technology Forum to encourage collaboration and focus on greater quality across the enterprise. Learn more about Greg at MissionWares.com and GregPaskal.com.

Nirav Patel, the QA manager of QAE for pharmacy, retail, and health and wellness divisions at Walgreens, has been in QA for more than fifteen years. Specializing in metrics-driven governance and financial control, Nirav drives the concept-to-implementation process of the transformational initiatives across his portfolio. He is an active advocate of quality engineering to drive consistency and efficiency within the practice.

Jeffery Payne is CEO and founder of Coveros, Inc., a software company that builds secure software applications using agile methods. Since its inception in 2008, Coveros has become a market leader in secure agile principles and recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in the country. Prior to founding Coveros, Jeffery was chairman of the board, CEO, and co-founder of Cigital, Inc., a market leader in software security consulting. He has published more than thirty papers on software development and testing, and testified before Congress on issues of national importance, including intellectual property rights, cyber terrorism, and software quality.

Jeffery Payne is CEO and founder of Coveros, Inc., a software company that builds secure software applications using agile methods. Since its inception in 2008, Coveros has become a market leader in secure agile principles and recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest growing private companies in the country. Prior to founding Coveros, Jeffery was chairman of the board, CEO, and co-founder of Cigital, Inc., a market leader in software security consulting.

Dale Perry has more than thirty-eight years of experience in information technology as a programmer/analyst, database administrator, project manager, development manager, tester, and test manager. Dale’s project experience includes large-system development and conversions, distributed systems, and both web-based and client/server applications. A professional instructor for more than twenty-four years, he has presented at numerous industry conferences on development and testing. With TechWell for nineteen years, Dale has specialized in training and consulting on testing (test design and planning), inspections and reviews, and other testing and quality-related topics.

After several years working as a scientist in particle physics and computational fluid dynamics, Ingo Philipp immersed himself in the multifaceted worlds of functional software testing and development. Ingo is on the product management team at Tricentis where his responsibilities range from product development and product marketing to test management, test conception, test design, and test automation. His experiences with software testing embrace the application of agile as well as classical testing methodologies in various sectors including insurance, banking, commerce, telecommunications, and energy.

Martin Pol has played a significant role in raising the awareness and improving the performance of testing worldwide. Martin is experienced in managing testingprocesses and implementing and improving structured testing in many organizations. He was responsible for creating the structured testing approach TMap® (Test Management Approach) and TPI® (Test Process Improvement), which have both become world standards. As the architect of the method, Martin recently coauthored Testing Cloud Services. A highly regarded presenter at conferences and training sessions on five continents, he remains active in the practice of testing every day.

A QA manager at Comcast Corporation, Karen Pruitt leads a global team that provides a full suite of quality assurance services for ETL, data warehousing, and Big Data initiatives that offer valuable insight into subscriber behaviors. A trained industrial engineer with nearly twenty years of information technology experience, Karen has strong ties to the telecommunications industry. She is passionate about teamwork and the use of technology to solve process challenges.

Björgvin Reynisson is a QA engineer at CCP Games where he is part of the graphics engine team, focusing on testing in general and automation in particular. He asks a lot of questions. Previously, Björgvin was with Nokia Mobile phones as a production test engineer where he implemented a large-scale testing system for mobile phones factories. He learned to appreciate automation and the use of data in tracking down defects. Björgvin has years of experience working with engineers and testers in Asia and Europe, testing both hardware and software. He occasionally expresses his views on Twitter @breynisson.

Principal consultant and a member of the core team at Agile Artisans, Jared Richardson is a process coach who works with software teams to help them build excellent software. He sold his first software program in 1991 and has been immersed in software ever since. He helped create the GROWS methodology and has authored a number of books, including the best selling Ship It! A Practical Guide to Successful Software Projects and Career 2.0: Take Control of Your Life. He is a frequent speaker at software conferences and a thought leader in the agile space. Jared lives with his wife and children in North Carolina where they, quite by accident, became backyard chicken farmers.

Bj Rollison has more than twenty-five years of experience in the software industry. His twenty-year career at Microsoft began in 1994 on the Windows 95 international team and ended—several projects later—on the Windows Phone team. At Microsoft he held several leadership and individual contributor positions. But, the most rewarding was as a Test Architect in Microsoft’s Engineering Excellence group where he designed and delivered hands-on training to Microsoft’s 6,000 test engineers. Bj now teaches software testing and test automation practices at University of Washington and Duy Tan University in Vietnam. Bj enjoys sailing, stamp collecting, gardening, and spending time with his family.

Rob Sabourin, P. Eng., has more than thirty-four years of management experience leading teams of software development professionals. A well-respected member of the software engineering community, Rob has managed, trained, mentored, and coached hundreds of top professionals in the field. He frequently speaks at conferences and writes on software engineering, SQA, testing, management, and internationalization. Rob wrote I am a Bug!, the popular software testing children's book; works as an adjunct professor of software engineering at McGill University; and serves as the principle consultant (and president/janitor) of AmiBug.Com, Inc. Contact Rob at [email protected].

For almost a decade, Max Saperstone has been a test engineer focusing on test automation and the continuous integration/continuous delivery process. Max specializes in open source tools—Selenium, JMeter, AutoIT, Cucumber, and Chef. He has led several testing automation efforts, including developing an automated suite focused on web-based software to operate over several applications. Max also headed a major project developing an automated testing structure to run Cucumber tests over multiple test interfaces and environments, while developing a system to keep test data “ageless.” He is currently developing a new testing architecture for SecureCI to allow testing of multiple interfaces, custom reporting, and minimal test upkeep.

Lawdan Shojaee is used to breaking boundaries. As the CEO of Axosoft, she has become one of the few women in the Phoenix Valley to head a tech company. She has a doctorate in Physical Therapy, and over 800 hours logged at the controls of a single-engine plane. She is passionate about paving the way for women in the tech, which is why her company created the viral campaign #ItWasNeverADress.

Michael Sowers, CIO and senior consultant at TechWell, has more than twenty-five years of practical experience as a global quality and test leader of internationally distributed test teams across multiple industries. Mike is a senior consultant, skilled in working with both large and small organizations to improve their software development, testing, and delivery approaches. He has worked with companies including Fidelity Investments, PepsiCo, FedEx, Southwest Airlines, Wells Fargo, ADP, and Lockheed to improve software quality, reduce time to market, and decrease costs. With his passion for helping teams deliver software faster, better, and cheaper, Mike has mentored and coached senior software leaders, small teams, and direct contributors worldwide.

Clint Sprauve is the senior product marketing manager for HP Software Functional Testing. Previously, Clint was the director of product strategy for the Borland Solutions division of Micro Focus, where he created Borland’s mobile strategy for functional test automation. With more than twenty years of experience in the software development and quality assurance industry, Clint has served as the senior product marketing manager for the Silk Testing Solutions at Borland Software and Segue Software, and as a senior technical sales engineer for both companies. He has been an independent consultant, specializing in test management and test automation.

Xiaomei Tai has eleven years of software testing experience working in Huawei, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of telecommunication devices. In 2012, Xiaomei became an independent software testing consultant, spreading and coaching the methods she put forward such as MFQ&PPDCS framework for test analysis and test design, T-RCA for defect based test improvement, and KLTDR for describing a testing mind, etc. She is the co-founder and program chair of the ChinaTest conference (2012–2015). Xiaomei and her colleagues endeavor to improve the Chinese software testing industry. More of her activities and ideas can be found on her website ShareTesting.com.

The director of quality at Ipreo in Raleigh, NC, Mary Thorn has a broad testing background that spans automation, data warehouses, and web-based systems in a wide variety of technologies and testing techniques. During her more than seventeen years of experience in healthcare, HR, financial, and SaaS-based products, Mary has held manager and contributor level positions in software development organizations. A strong leader in agile testing methodologies, she has direct experience leading teams through agile adoption and beyond.

With more than sixteen years of experience as a coordinator and manager in software testing, Jim Trentadue has filled various testing roles focused on test execution, automation, management, environment management, standards deployment, and test tool implementation. Jim has presented at numerous industry conferences including the STAREAST, STARWEST, Better Software Conference East, and IBM Rational Software Development Conference. Jim has been a guest speaker at the University of South Florida’s software testing class, mentoring students on the testing industry and discussing trends for establishing future job searches and continued training.

Iris Trout is a quality and process transformation expert with more than thirty years of experience. Iris got her start in the quality arena at First Fidelity Bank (now Wells Fargo) where Iris began to understand the importance of standardized process and its impact on the bottom line. Most recently, Iris has been responsible for managing the development, implementation, and maintenance of quality assurance systems and activities at TD Bank. Iris is a certified CMM Lead Assessor, Six Sigma Black Belt, Lean SS, Certified ISTQB Test Manager, and ITIL.

Thomas Vaniotis has more than ten years of experience as a tester, developer, and product analyst. At NYC-based institutional brokerage Liquidnet, he is the product manager for internal and external customer tools that manage multiple complex trading applications. Thomas is interested in data-driven business analysis, customer experience design, exploratory testing, and the theory of software creation. His undergraduate background in music and philosophy give him a unique perspective on the world of finance and technology. He has previously spoken at STARCANADA, CAST, and STPCon, and tweets @tvaniotis.

Thomas Vaniotis has more than ten years of experience as a tester, developer, and product analyst. At NYC-based institutional brokerage Liquidnet, Thomas is the product manager for internal and external customer tools that manage multiple complex trading applications. He is interested in data-driven business analysis, customer-experience design, exploratory testing, and the theory of software creation. Thomas’ background in music and philosophy gives him a unique perspective on the world of finance and technology. He has previously spoken at STARCANADA and CAST, and tweets @tvaniotis.

A director at Cognizant’s Quality Engineering & Assurance (QE&A) practice, Sutharson Veeravalli manages large delivery organizations and specializes in implementing transformational initiatives that enhance the delivery ecosystem. Sutharson has twenty years of experience spanning banking and retail domains, process and domain consulting, large system delivery, product management, and QA transformation for clients. He brings a diverse experience in leading multiple transformational initiatives that have delivered multimillion dollar savings to clients.

Alison Wade is an accomplished executive dedicated to the business of software. For the past fifteen years, she has worked with industry leaders developing programs for software development and testing professionals. She is the Program Chair for the Mobile Dev + Test Conference, and she plays a pivotal role in the development of the Better Software, Agile Development Practices, DevOps, and STAR Conferences. She also directs Software Quality Engineering’s highly respected training curriculum and programs. Alison strives to increase awareness of diversity in the software industry concerning both the workforce and the role of software beyond commercial products and IT departments. In 2015, Alison launched Women Who Test, a day dedicated to women in software testing, happening in conjunction with the STARWEST conference. You can find her at @awadesqe or @womenwhotest.

Al Wagner is a testing evangelist with IBM, driving thought leadership, strategic initiatives, and tangible solutions with a specific focus on quality management, test automation, and service virtualization. In his fifteen years of practical IT field experience, Al has assisted, supported, mentored, and enabled teams with their IT application infrastructure, development, implementation, and operations challenges. A frequent conference speaker on software quality principles and techniques, Al coauthored the IBM Service Virtualization for Dummies book, Testing SAP Solutions For Dummies, and authored numerous papers on quality management and test automation.